Vyasa joins NVIDIA Inception program

Vyasa Analytics, which produces deep learning software and analytics for life sciences and healthcare spaces, has joined the NVIDIA Inception program, which helps startups develop AI and data sciences products.

“NVIDIA is a clear leader in the deep learning revolution, and we are honored to have been accepted into their renowned Inception program,” said Dr. Christopher Bouton, founder and CEO of Vyasa. “At Vyasa, we’re developing and applying deep learning analytics to high-value use cases for our life sciences and healthcare clients, and NVIDIA’s technology will help us fuel these advances.”

Vyasa is focused on life sciences and healthcare spaces with its secure, highly-scalable deep learning software, Cortex, that permits use to use deep learning on big data sets including text, images, quantitative data and chemical structures to discover unexpected patterns, relationships and concepts across disparate sources.

For example, the software is able to integrate and analyze this complicated data to address questions in areas including business development, EHR analytics, compliance/fraud detection, crystal morphology classification for formulation, drug repurposing and de novo compound design, said the company.

The NVIDIA move brings to the firm its GPU technology – which is key to modern deep learning neural network models.

In late July, Vyasa received a $1.8 million loan from MassDevelopment’s Emerging Technology Fund to hire 18 additional employees in Massachusetts, and build out a GPU-based computer infrastructure in Boston, the company stated.

MassDevelopment’s fund supports the development of technology and advanced manufacturing companies in Massachusetts – providing $73.1 million in loans and guarantees since it began in 2003.

“There is no better place in the world to build an AI-driven data analytics company than in Massachusetts, and we are honored to receive this support from MassDevelopment,” said Bouton, adding that, “data is at the core of the life science and healthcare industries. We are helping these organizations apply novel deep learning analytics more effectively so that they can advance research and development and deliver better patient care.”

“MassDevelopment president and CEO Lauren Liss called Vyasa's work “game-changing,” and said that her organization is “thrilled to support the company through its next stage of growth.”

In April, NVIDIA unveiled its Clara initiative, aiming to create for worldwide imaging providers a single source of AI-powered continuous updates for their existing install bases in the form of a single, virtual supercomputer.

At its March GPU Technology Conference, it demonstrated with ultrasound and CT that a virtual supercomputer could utilize AI to capture patient data from imaging modalities as well all other resources to create and deploy imaging applications anywhere.

“It’s not dissimilar to thinking of it as your iPhone,” Kimberly Powell, vice president of healthcare at Nvidia, told HCB News at the time. “Over time, a new application comes to your iPhone and all of a sudden, it gives you this new capability, but your iPhone didn’t have to get upgraded. It’s just a new application.”

While still in early stages, the current thinking is that Clara would be a combination of GPU and cloud-based technology, with current computer architecture forming a finished product capable of evaluating data, whether it's graphics-oriented, computer-oriented, or AI-oriented, or a combination of all three.